Book Reviews 11/2017

There's mystery throughout Steven Lewis's new novel Loving Violet,, of the universal sort. How will our choices impact our grandchildren? Why do we love the ones we love? Is there such a thing as objective truth in marriage? Lewis, father of seven and ...(Nov 1, 2017, Chronogram)

Book Review: A Murderous Summer at Bard

What's really going on in the rarefied circles where college presidents and deep-pocketed donors wine, dine, and deal along Millionaires' Row? Possibly only the live-in help knows for sure. But in the Hudson Valley of Glenda Ruby's imagination, its ...(Nov 1, 2017, Chronogram)

Bruce Dickinson, 'What Does This Button Do?: An Autobiography' – Book Review

In his 30 years as leader of Iron Maiden, Bruce Dickinson has been a rock star, pilot, fencer, moviemaker, entrepreneur, radio host, author, cancer survivor and probably a few other vocations I'm missing. His remarkable life is chronicled in his ...(Nov 1, 2017, Loudwire)

Book Review: 'Landscape With Invisible Hand,' MT Anderson

How do you write a book about the human costs of laissez-faire capitalism that won't make readers' eyes glaze over? Make it about an alien invasion. At least, that's the sly solution that East Calais author M.T. Anderson deploys in his latest young ...(Nov 1, 2017, Seven Days)

Book Review: Behind The Bench - Inside the Minds of Hockey's Greatest Coaches

If you are reading this, there's a strong chance you are a hockey fan, and in particular most likely a Bruins fan. As a fan, have you ever wanted to know what was really going on behind the bench or in the locker room during the Boston Bruins Stanley ...(Nov 1, 2017, Stanley Cup of Chowder)

Book review: Whiplash! From JFK to Donald Trump, a Political Odyssey

The same could be said for books about politics. A walk through the ocean of most political memoirs would scarcely get your feet wet. One can read Hillary Clinton's “What Happened” and learn such details as how much she enjoyed the pork chop-on-a-stick ...(Nov 2, 2017, OCRegister)

Book review: Slow down by painting watercolors as you travel and explore

In “Colors of the West: An Artist's Guide to Nature's Palette,” she presents not only a handsome coffee-table book of her work, with gorgeous landscapes from Oregon's Ecola State Park to Wyoming's Devils Tower, but also a useful how-to manual for ...(Nov 2, 2017, Seattle Times)

Book Review: A Moonless, Starless Sky

Amidst all the world events that have seized our national attention in 2017, Africa has faded from our cultural awareness. A book like A Moonless, Starless Sky seizes our attention and reminds us that the lives of the millions of people across that ...(Nov 2, 2017, Austin Chronicle)

Book Review: Uncommon Type: Some Stories

Yet just as I was about to fully settle into disappointment, the book took ahold of me. Again and again, as I made my way through the pages, I found myself unable to stop reading. The stories are creative and funny in a Hanks kind of way. And some cut ...(Nov 2, 2017, Austin Chronicle)

Book Review: Dinner at the Center of the Earth

During a recent appearance at BookPeople for the publication of this gripping new novel, author Nathan Englander gave a surprisingly short reading but then followed it with a lengthy and quite impassioned monologue about his obsessive desire to move to ...(Nov 2, 2017, Austin Chronicle)

Book review – Harry Potter: A Journey Through A History Of Magic is great fun for young readers

The young girl's input proved crucial, and Newton approved editor Barry Cunningham's proposal to publish the book that would become the first in the blockbuster series that would sell more than 450 million copies worldwide and be translated into 79 ...(Nov 2, 2017, South China Morning Post)

Walter Isaacson: By the Book

I'm a big reader of reviews. My friend Michael Lynton has the welcome habit of actually sending me books that he recommends, and he just sent me John Bloom's “Eccentric Orbits” about communications satellites. I also like wandering into bookstores and ...(Nov 2, 2017, New York Times)

Book Review - 'The Mechanic', by Marc Priestley

That book was first published in 1999, when the F1 calendar crossed rather less of the globe than it does today. Now, Marc 'Elvis' Priestley has published his own account of a similar story, this time set in the 2000s. The Mechanic is a worthy ...(Nov 2, 2017, Motorsport.com, Edition: Global)

Book Review: Ants among Elephants

Ants among Elephants is an absorbing and moving history of modern India from the perspective of a family of Christian “untouchables.” Author Sujatha Gidla, now a New York City subway conductor and member of Transport Workers Local 100, traces three ...(Nov 2, 2017, Labor Notes (blog))

A Chronicle of Homelessness Is Also an Offbeat Hymn to Life

“Travels With Lizbeth” contains the finest first-person writing we have about the experience of being homeless in America. It is not a dirge or a Bukowski-like scratching of the groin but an offbeat and plaintive hymn to life. It's the sort of book ...(Nov 2, 2017, New York Times)

'Thor: Ragnarok' Is Rotten Tomatoes' Highest-Ranked Comic Book Movie

Well, I didn't rush out and write this article ten seconds after the review embargo dropped. Reviews have been pouring in for Thor: Ragnarok for the last two weeks, and every critic who is going to see it prior to its domestic debut has already done so ...(Nov 2, 2017, Forbes)

Book Review Rosemary Friedman's Final Draft

Rosemary Friedman's book Final Draft thankfully falls into the former category. At 88, she has written novels, scripts, plays, non-fiction and short stories. Final Draft is her valedictory collection, with the sub-title Reflections on Life. And those ...(Nov 2, 2017, Jewish Chronicle)

Book Review: 'A Body of Work: Dancing to the Edge and Back' by David Hallberg

In his stirring autobiography A Body of Work: Dancing to the Edge and Back, David Hallberg – a Principal Dancer with the American Ballet Theatre and the first American Principal Dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet – traces the trajectory of his life and ...(Nov 2, 2017, DC Metro Theater Arts (press release) (blog))

Book Review: Maguire Pens Novel About a Wooden Hero

If you have a child who dreams of dancing, you've seen The Nutcracker enough times to know that you can't leave until Clara finally wakes up — and you do, too. During the years when my younger daughter studied at Boston Ballet, she was sometimes a ...(Nov 2, 2017, Valley News)

The Best Illustrated

This year marks the 65th anniversary of the Best Illustrated Children's Books Award — and the first year of the Times' partnership with the New York Public Library on the honor. We're unveiling a new name: The New York Times/New York Public Library ...(Nov 2, 2017, New York Times)

Fred Hersch: Open Book review – a world of teeming melodic colour

There's no such thing as a casual listen to a Fred Hersch recording. Diving into the American pianist/composer's work is no cold shower, though, but a trip into an enchanting world of teeming melodies, rich colours and criss-crossing stories. Like ...(Nov 2, 2017, The Guardian)

Heroic Book Review

I'd like to add my voice to the chorus praising Scalia Speaks, the recent compendium of speeches given by the late, great justice. In doing so, let me offer a couple of points that I've not seen made elsewhere. First, because this is book is not only ...(Nov 2, 2017, National Review)

“Scalia Speaks” Book Review | National Review

I'd like to add my voice to the chorus praising "Scalia Speaks," the recent compendium of speeches given by the late, great justice ...(Nov 2, 2017, National Review)

Book review: Day-to-day life in the shadow of the Civil War

In 1991 Edward Ayers, one of the most accomplished historians of the 19th century, got the idea for a different kind of history of the Civil War. Rather than paint a grand tableau of the momentous conflict between the North and the South, he would ...(Nov 2, 2017, The Denver Post)

Book review: A nut-and-dolt story by the author of “Wicked”

If you have a child who dreams of dancing, you've seen “The Nutcracker” enough times to know that you can't leave until Clara finally wakes up — and you do, too. During the years when my younger daughter studied at Boston Ballet, she was sometimes a ...(Nov 2, 2017, The Denver Post)

Notes From the Book Review Archives

This week's issue highlights new books about influential figures in American history, including a biography of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. In 1989, Schlesinger, using an iconic scene in “Huckleberry Finn,” argued that America was a nation of relativism ...(Nov 3, 2017, New York Times)

When you listen to Knoxville native Kelsea Ballerini's sophomore album, "Unapologetically," it feels like you're reading pages out of her diary. The album, which releases Friday, Nov. 3, is personal and reflective as Ballerini uses her music to delve ...(Nov 3, 2017, Knoxville News Sentinel)

Tomorrow is the Young Readers Festival in Flagstaff, a breakout event of the Northern Arizona Book Festival. One of the headliners is Erin Jade Lange, an award-winning author of contemporary young adult novels. In this month's Southwest Book Review, ...(Nov 3, 2017, KNAU Arizona Public Radio)

Book Review: You Don't Have To Say You Love Me

Each reader is invited to immerse himself, to take the book on its own terms or not at all, all of which makes it difficult to review in the usual way. And of course we already knew it, but this man can write! Even at his most repetitive and ...(Nov 3, 2017, KLCC FM Public Radio)

New & Noteworthy

BEYOND THE RICE FIELDS By Naivo. (Restless Books, $19.99.) The first novel from Madagascar to be translated into English, this epic tells the story of the island nation through the twin narratives of a slave and his master's daughter. JUST A JOURNALIST ...(Nov 3, 2017, New York Times)

The San Francisco Fallacy, book review: Unconventional wisdom

The book wraps up with Siegel becoming an investor and seeing founders making all his own mistakes. You also get a more detailed explanation of how to find out if there's a market for your product. Anyone considering creating or joining a startup will ...(Nov 3, 2017, ZDNet)

Book Review: 4 must-reads for sci-fi aficionados

The book follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter searching for illegal androids hiding on Earth. As his hunt progresses and the danger increases, Deckard must grapple with questions about the nature of consciousness, empathy, and biological vs ...(Nov 3, 2017, Steamboat Pilot & Today)

The American Revolution in Six Lives

1. Open your podcast app. It's a pre-loaded app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. 2. Search for the series. Tap on the “search” magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen, type in “Inside The New York Times Book Review” and select it from ...(Nov 3, 2017, New York Times)

BOOK REVIEW: "Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier" by Mark Frost

Released on Halloween, Mark Frost's Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, the much-anticipated follow-up to last year's information-loaded book The Secret History of Twin Peaks, is a bit lighter when it comes to new revelations, but for those who watched ...(Nov 3, 2017, Red Dirt Report)

How Queen Edith-Matilda washed lepers' feet and gained the stature of a saint

Book One is the story of one woman called Adeliza and four called Matilda: William the Conqueror's wife, Matilda of Flanders; his son Henry I's two wives, Edith-Matilda of Scotland and Adeliza of Louvain; Matilda of Boulogne, consort of William's ...(Nov 3, 2017, Washington Post)

Khizr Khan's long love affair with America

Now, in his book “An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice,” Khan gets the chance to quietly tell his story, away from the klieg lights and easy (if sometimes misguided) symbolism. If the Khan depicted in his memoir is as guileless as he ...(Nov 3, 2017, Washington Post)

The deliberate starvation of millions in Ukraine

To be sure, Russia is not the Soviet Union, and Russians of today can decide whether they wish to accept a Stalinist version of the past. But to have that choice, they need a sense of the history. This is one more reason to be grateful for this ...(Nov 3, 2017, Washington Post)

Book Review: 'The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn' by Robert P. Watson

Towering over a crypt on a hill in Brooklyn's Fort Greene Park is a 149-foot obelisk. Hundreds if not thousands of people pass near it every day. Park visitors sometimes stop to take a photo. But to a great many of them, probably most, the import of ...(Nov 4, 2017, seattlepi.com (blog))

George HW Bush calls Trump a 'blowhard' in new book: 'I don't like him'

... says in the book, according to a review by The New York Times. “I don't know much about him, but I know he's a blowhard. And I'm not too excited about him being a leader.” In the book, titled “The Last Republicans,” the 41st president also revealed ...(Nov 4, 2017, Fox News)

Book review: 'Endowed With Power' clarifies temple ordinances and testifies of Christ

"Endowed with Power: How Temple Symbols Guide Us to Christ's Atonement" is by C. Robert Line. "ENDOWED WITH POWER: How Temple Symbols Guide Us to Christ's Atonement," by C. Robert Line, Cedar Fort, $12.99, 152 pages (nf). Members of The ...(Nov 4, 2017, Deseret News)

The book sets us on a journey via two different time frames, the first “Then” gives us the story of Lane's first summer at Roanoke and how she gets to know the family she didn't know existed. “Then” should be one of those happy stories of new friends ...(Nov 5, 2017, Flickering Myth (blog))

Book review (FICTION): Wiley Cash is at his best as he turns fact into fiction in his latest novel

I like to think of that moment a writer is struck with the idea of turning a real-life event into a fictional work. Intimidation? Exhilaration? One emotion after the other? Everything at once? Any writer would be comforted knowing there's a framework ...(Nov 5, 2017, Richmond.com)

Book review: 'Just a Journalist'

So the book feels oddly dated, even if Greenhouse now contends that the news media's zealous treatment of Trump has retroactively validated her arguments. She illustrates those arguments primarily with examples from the New York Times – not because ...(Nov 5, 2017, Bowling Green Daily News)

Book review: Vengeance and retribution of Shakespearian proportions in 'Parting Shot'

Across town, wealthy long-time resident Madeline Plimpton summons Cal Weaver to her home to ask him to help her grandnephew, the infamous Jeremy Pilford. The young man is being threatened daily by internet trolls and others who are outraged by his ...(Nov 5, 2017, Florida Times-Union)

Book Review: Florida book offers 'new stories from a sinking peninsula'

Diaz is a Kenyon Review Fellow who won a Pushcart Prize and edited “15 Views of Miami.” Burrow Press of Orlando, which published “We Can't Help It,” started with a 2012 fiction anthology called “15 Views of Orlando.” The series covered Miami and Tampa ...(Nov 5, 2017, Sarasota Herald-Tribune)

Book Review: You won't want 'Glass Houses' to end

What a pleasure it's been to spend my leisure hours with Louise Penny's newest mystery novel, “Glass Houses.” Her talent for creating a warm and loving community of characters, a story thickly embedded with twists and surprises, smart insights into ...(Nov 5, 2017, Foster's Daily Democrat)